This blog continues my effort to chronicle my writing life, my efforts to market my work, and now my life as co-owner of a small press. I use this blog to explore the thoughts, feelings, and very nature of being an author and a publisher. I am the author of 5 detective novels, 4 action thrillers and a marketing manual. I am also the editorial director of Intrigue Publishing. I am active in local writer’s organizations and co-founded the Creatures, Crimes & Creativity conference.

Saturday, February 21, 2015

Today I attended a
Local Author Showcase put on by a local book club. The event was well organized
and well run, with only some nasty weather offering a bit of a challenge. Most
of my fellow authors maintained a warm positive attitude but a few disappointed
me. It seems there should be a class in how writers who are invited to a book
fair event should behave. Allow me to offer a few tips.

First, remember that
you are a guest at an event that someone has worked hard to put together.So show your hosts some respect. If for some
reason you can’t make it, at least call or send an email saying so, so the
organizers don’t try to save your table. And if you paid to attend and can’t,
don’t ask for a refund on the day of the event. Your organizers have already
paid for the space and sometimes a meal for a count that included you. They are
not responsible if you choose not to show up.

If you do attend,
please be on time. Getting set up in a narrow hall (or worse, at a street fair)
only gets harder if you don’t stick to the organizer’s set up schedule.

If there are other
rules, respect them. Every little rule established by the show hosts has a
reason. If you have questions, ask them respectfully. You are much more likely
to get what you need, and you won’t put them in a bad mood that could affect
the rest of us.

You should also remember
that you are there as part of a community of writers, not a crowd of
competitors. So don’t pitch to the other authors. I’m not there to talk about
your book; I’m there to talk about mine.

Don’t ask for trades - It is not my intent to
leave the book fair with the same number of books I arrived with, and if I say
yes to you I’d feel funny saying no to others. Besides, if I wanted your book
I’d offer you money like everyone else.

Don’t steal buyers! If someone is already talking
to me it is rude to start talking to them about your book. Odds are they don’t
want to offend anyone and so they’ll leave with neither book.

Similarly, don’t stand in front of my table or
booth. You have a space assigned to you. When people wander into that area,
speak to them. Not before, and absolutely not after. So don’t chase
people down. If she was interested in your book she wouldn’t have walked away.
If you make her angry she’ll think we’re all like that and will be afraid to
speak to anyone.

For goodness sake don’t whine. If you don’t think
the organizers advertised enough, or if you don’t like the weather, the venue,
the patrons or the rules, keep it to yourself. The rest of us are trying to
remain cheerful and positive, because that’s what attracts potential book
buyers.

Focus on your book - No one wants to hear about
your heart transplant, unless perhaps your book is about surviving a heart
transplant. Likewise no one cares that you’re a war hero - unless you wrote a
war book.

Finally, be willing to share - your ideas, your
thoughts, your lemonade and most of all your enthusiasm. Positive mental
attitude is contagious and if you help create a cheerful and pleasant
atmosphere, we may even recommend your book to the lady who doesn’t like ours.

If you follow these
simple tips you will always be welcome at a future Author Showcase. And you’ll sign more books.

Sunday, February 15, 2015

While I should be
tackling the final rewrite of the next Hannibal Jones mystery I am instead
focused on my publisher duties, reading through an avalanche of submissions,
sifting the sand in search of 16 nuggets of gold worthy of publication.

Intrigue Publishing
is taking submissions for a Young Adult anthology entitled Young
Adventurers: Heroes, Explorers & Swashbucklers. We want stories of action, adventure and, yes,
intrigue, featuring a teenage protagonist. We welcome spy thrillers, mysteries,
science fiction, paranormal or fantasy stories. Dragons and magic are fine. Straight
adventure stories are also welcome and they could be set in any time period. We’d
love to see a good western or pirate story. The subtitle, “Tales of teens
saving the day in the past, the present, the future & on other worlds” is
an indication of the level of diversity we’re looking for. But I’ve already
encountered a surprising amount of what we DON’T want.

For example, our submission guidelines clearly
state that “The manuscript must be double-spaced, 12-point type, (Times New
Roman or Arial.)” And yet, so far I have received stories in 11 point, one
single spaced, another in a font called Calibri and one in a format called “.pages”
which I can’t open with any software on my computer. If these people can’t get
something as simple as font or format right how much detail do we think they
pay to their prose? And if these simple instructions are too much for them, how
will they respond to an editor’s input?

The submission guidelines also included this
direction: “The important requirements are that the protagonist be a courageous
teenage boy or girl, that the story be gripping with a real sense of risk or
danger, and that the protagonist survives or saves the day through his or her
own intelligence, skill and ingenuity.”

And yet, I’ve read three stories so far in
which the teen protagonist is little more than an observer or the person in
jeopardy who gets rescued by an adult.

So what’s my point? It’s tedious enough
reading weak and poorly written hunting for the ones the rare one worthy to be
in an Intrigue Publishing anthology. If a writer doesn’t bother to adhere to
our submission guidelines they are telling me that they don’t really care if we
buy their story or not. If you DO want
someone to pay for your story, or novel, you dramatically increase your chances
when you give them what they ask for.

Sunday, February 1, 2015

Here’s the problem: being a publisher requires a lot of focus. I’m also a
professional communicator for the Defense Department. And then I am at heart a
writer. People often ask me how I can ever get any writing done with all my
other responsibilities.

But I’m not alone, am I? All writers are multitasking. Even if you don’t
have a job to do, I’ll bet you have a family, a dog to walk or a cat to feed,
friends who need you or just want to hang out, a room that needs painting or a
car you should be washing. So, what do we do when this thing called life gets
in the way of our passion – writing.

Well, like any addict, step one is admitting that you have a problem. The
problem is that there are only so many hours in a day. It’s easy to focus on
something else today. Then tomorrow something else grabs you. And the next
thing you know, a month has passed without any writing getting done. Admit to
yourself that your novel or short stories will never appear if you only write
when you have the time.

Step two is to take a good hard look at your life. Figure out what your
priorities are and you should actually list them. You should admit to yourself that
there are things more important than your writing, but also determine those
time eaters that are less important.

Step three is the hard part. Commitment. How much time will you give your
passion? Two hours a week? Ten hours? There’s no wrong answer. You’ll write as
much as you need to, but accept that you won’t be doing something else. Maybe
that means you’ll miss Friday night at the club with your pals. Maybe you won’t
keep up with Downton Abbey. But whatever the choice, you need to make a firm commitment
to an amount of time your writing deserves and stick to it.

Then take a close look at yourself as a writer. What time of day are you
creative thoughts flowing? Does your muse visit early in the morning, late at
night, or mid-day during your lunch hour? Once you know that you can make a
schedule. That’s right, you should pick up your calendar and block out your
writing time. It should be someplace you can see it every day.

Once you’ve figured out how to keep life from getting in the way of your
writing, stick to it! You’ll find that if you sit down to create every day at
the same time your mind will quickly become conditioned to the schedule. When
you sit down to write, the ideas will already be there, raring to go. And your
writing won’t let your life get in the way.

About Me

I am the author of 5 detective novels in the Hannibal Jones series - Blood and Bone, Collateral Damage, The Troubleshooter, Damaged Goods and Russian Roulette, plus 4 action adventure novels, The Payback Assignment, The Orion Assignment, The Piranha Assignment and the Ice Woman Assignment. I'm active in several local writers’ organizations - a past president of the Maryland Writers Association and past vice-president of the Virginia Writers Club. By day I handle media relations for the Defense Department. For more than a decade the American Forces Network carried my radio and television news reports. I've settled in Upper Marlboro, Maryland and launched Intrigue Publishing.